A Morphogenetic Framework for Self-Organized Multirobot Pattern Formation and Boundary Coverage

作者：Guo Hongliang; Jin Yaochu^*; Meng Yan

来源：ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, 2012, 7(1): 15.

DOI：10.1145/2168260.2168275

• Design
• Performance
• Swarm robotic systems
• shape formation
• boundary coverage
• morphogenesis
• self-organization

Embryonic development of multicellular organisms, also known as morphogenesis, is regarded as a robust self-organization process for pattern generation. Inspired by the recent findings in biology indicating that morphogen gradients, together with a Gene Regulatory Network (GRN), play a key role in biological patterning, we propose a framework for self-organized multirobot pattern formation and boundary coverage based on an artificial GRN model. The proposed framework does not need a global coordinate system, which makes it more practical to be implemented in a physical robotic system. Moreover, an adaptation mechanism is included in the framework so that the self-organization algorithm is robust to changes in the number of robots. Various case studies of multirobot pattern formation and boundary coverage show the effectiveness of the framework.

• 出版日期2012-4